Ray Donovan: The Complete Series DVD review

Oct 10, 2022- Permalink

The Showtime series Ray Donovan ran for seven seasons from 2013 to 2020. The show was supposed to end with an eighth season, but it was abruptly cancelled by network’s new regime when CBS merged with Viacom. After a loud outcry by fans on social media, the powers that be thought it best to offer showrunner David Hollander and chance to wrap the show up with a two-hour movie. Ray Donovan: The Movie premiered on Showtime in January 2022.

Liev Schreiber plays the title character, a “fixer” who makes problems for his celebrity clients go away through various illegal means including bribes, crime scene clean ups and threats. When he’s not making problems go away, he’s devoted to his family, but not so much his wife. And then there’s his dad, Mickey (Jon Voight), recently released from prison. With no intent to reform, his reappearance complicates Ray’s life further. Paramount and CBS Home Entertainment are releasing the series and movie together as a Ray Donovan: The Complete Series DVD set. I had a chance to take a look.

The video for the series and movie is presented in a 16:9 aspect ratio. I’ve mentioned this in previous TV DVD reviews: as a 2000s era HD series it would of course have been nice to see it released on Blu-ray, but the economics of TV home media releases often see them released on DVD only. Still, the release is very good for DVD, with as much detail as the format can handle. The colour palette is pleasing and there are only minor compression artifacts evident here or there.

On the audio side, all seasons and the movie have an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Seasons one and two also have French and Spanish 2.0 tracks while season three has only an additional Spanish 2.0 track. The other seasons and the movie are English only. Seasons one through three have English subtitles, while the remaining seasons and the movie also have English SDH subtitles. Dialogue is clear and centred, music used sounds good, and the surrounds are put to good use for action and ambient sounds.

The 29-disc DVD set is housed in a large plastic case with the DVDs stacked on multiple spindles. The set does not include a digital code. There are several production featurettes and commentaries spread across the seasons, but the set also includes a couple episodes from a few Showtime series: Billions, The Affair, Penny Dreadful, and Happyish.

With very good audio and video for the DVD format, fans of the show or the curious who like to collect will be happy picking up Ray Donovan: The Complete Series on DVD.